„Everything was political“

Did you have any connection to Oberhausen before you became its director?

I was a film and television critic in Munich at the time, mainly for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, for the Deutsches Allgemeine Sonntagsblatt, for Bayerischer Rundfunk and for specialist magazines such as Fernsehen und Film, Jugend-Film-Fernsehen, Medium, also for specialist newsletters such as epd-Kirche and Film/Fernsehen. I had regularly attended the Oberhausen Festival since 1969 or 1970.

And did you already have a relationship with the Eastern Bloc before your work as festival director?

Although I have no family roots in the Eastern Bloc, I was curious about the world beyond the Iron Curtain from an early age. Not least because of important films, especially from the USSR and Poland, which were also shown in cinemas in the West and which I saw as a secondary school student. As a student, I travelled to Prague with friends in 1969. A student exchange with Romania was the beginning of a long-lasting relationship with this little-known country – both privately and professionally. As a young film critic, I often visited film festivals in the East, even travelling as far as Tashkent. I regularly reported on the Leipzig Documentary Film Week from 1970 onwards. It was my opinion that the GDR existed without inverted commas and I argued along the lines of Willy Brandt's new Ostpolitik.

Am I right in assuming that the history of GDR film in Oberhausen can be divided into the period before 1969, i.e. before Willy Brandt and his reorientation of Ostpolitik, and the period afterwards?

Yes, but there was a third phase that made my years in Oberhausen particularly exciting. Brandt was Chancellor until 1974 and I came to Oberhausen in 1975. It had already been clear for some time that Brandt's Ostpolitik was part of the festival's self-image. There used to be disputes with the federal government in Bonn. There was an inter-ministerial committee that demanded that all films from the Eastern Bloc be previewed by them, otherwise there would be no funding. Lord Mayor Luise Albertz, that was before my time, rejected this and waived federal funding. But when I arrived, that was all off the table, and Oberhausen was receiving funding from Bonn, too. And I quickly learnt that the Oberhausen Short Film Festival, which was seen as a ‘red festival’ in the West, had a somewhat different meaning for filmmakers in the East who were striving for more artistic independence and intellectual freedom: as the most important stage for presenting their work to an international audience of experts, free from ideological influence. In my time, there was only one case in which I myself, as festival director, had a film pre-screened for legal reasons.

Which film was that?

We had a film from Czechoslovakia about a Nazi criminal who allegedly lived unmolested in West Germany. The partners in Prague really wanted to show the film, which was not interesting from a cinematic point of view, in Oberhausen – presumably in the belief that they would expose a deliberately concealed affair in West Germany; which may have been the case in the 1950s, but no longer in the 1970s. But for us it was also part of a deal to get a film that we really wanted. I accepted the film, but it was clear to me that it had to be legally cleared. We brought in a specialist from an institution for the prosecution of Nazi crimes. He watched the film with us and confirmed that the facts described in it were all true. However, there was not enough evidence to initiate proceedings. But that was the only case of its kind in my time.

You show my film, I'll show yours – attempts to exert influence from the Eastern Bloc

Were there any attempts from the socialist countries to influence the programme?

I certainly experienced that – and it had to do with the period after Brandt's resignation, when his once groundbreaking policy towards the East degenerated into an insistence on the status quo. This culminated, I think, in the warning by Brandt adviser Egon Bahr that the Polish trade union Solidarność was a threat to world peace. Shortly after I took office, in August 1975, the Final Act of the CSCE was signed in Helsinki, in which the governments in the Eastern Bloc also pledged to uphold human rights and fundamental freedoms. This strengthened the dissidents and opposition activists in the East, who from then on were able to invoke these treaty agreements. In Moscow, but above all in the GDR, people now repeatedly took offence at films in our programmes that dealt with the freedom movements in actually existing socialism. In the GDR in particular, people presumed the right to determine what our festival meant when they criticised the presentation of Polish films, for example. Yes, but I never got involved in that. For many functionaries in the East, however, it was inconceivable and therefore unbelievable that the festival management in Oberhausen was independent and that the festival director had the last word.

But what could be shown from these countries depended on what the respective state film authorities suggested.

Yes – In the GDR it was the main film administration in the Ministry of Culture. Everything that took place at a festival was interpreted politically – that applied to all socialist countries.

Even very short animated films were seen from the point of view of whether they would accurately represent a country at a festival. Whether the Bulgarian films in Oberhausen were in the afternoon or evening programme, i.e. at a worse or better time, was interpreted as a political signal from Bonn. Because why should it be any different in the West than at home? I remember a really funny experience at the internationally renowned Moscow Film Festival in Moscow. While the festival was going on, the Soviet government signed a treaty with Turkey. It was probably about business, perhaps also about cultural relations, but it had no direct bearing on the festival programme in Moscow. Nevertheless, a Turkish film had to be quickly included in the competition programme. It didn't matter that only a kind of Turkish B-movie with regular belly dance scenes was available. The important thing was that it was a Turkish film – no matter how bad. The fact that this kind of thinking in the categories of representation and protocol was so rigid even among educated and sensible partners from the cultural scene in the East astonished me time and again.

But the contact with the GDR authorities was quite close, wasn't it? It wasn't usually the filmmakers who travelled to the festival, but delegations made up of cultural politicians.

It wasn't just about cultural politicians, it wasn't just functionaries who came, but also film critics and filmmakers. But the question was always whether the filmmakers or critics we invited were so-called travelling cadres and allowed to travel to the West at all. The most difficult thing was to communicate our expectations about who we would like to welcome to Oberhausen in Moscow. It was particularly complicated when it concerned a member of the International Jury from the USSR. It often worked like this there: Director X had just won an award for a tourist film in Italy, and as a reward and because he seemed so reliable, they wanted to allow him to travel to the West. The festival in Oberhausen was simply the next date, even if he had no connection to our festival. It was also sometimes difficult in the CSSR, where there were officials who liked to make deals – like this: If you show this film that we want, then you'll also get the film that you want. I was also faced with bizarre offers of corruption. I realised that the cultural exchange between West and East, especially at film festivals where so many encounters took place, was always in the focus of the secret services, especially those in the East. Many well-meaning left-wingers in the West refused to realise this and so fell into many a trap.

Things went better in other Eastern Bloc countries; as a rule, the filmmakers from Poland we invited were always allowed to come, and from Hungary anyway.

But were there any attempts to directly influence the programming from the GDR side?

Yes. Once, it must have been in the early 1980s, the documentary filmmakers Gerhard Scheumann and Walter Heynowski sent a film that had just been completed when the festival had already begun and demanded that it be shown in the international competition. I refused, the programme was complete, everything had already been printed. I offered to show the film in a so-called tradeshow, in which everyone could present their films to interested parties. As a result, H & S, as this studio operating outside the DEFA, i.e. the state film production, called itself, wanted the participants from the GDR to protest as one and leave. Ronald Trisch, the director of the Leipzig Documentary Film Festival at the time, was also the head of the delegation that year. He showed a surprisingly clear attitude towards his delegation members and the representatives of H & S – I don't remember whether either of them was personally among the H & S delegates. But I remember very well what Trisch had the courage to say: "This festival has its regulations. We stick to the regulations, the GDR films have been selected and run in the competition and there's no question of leaving! Goodbye, comrades." That really impressed me.

Kommando 52 is available online in full length here.

Heynowski and Scheumann responded to the cancellation of one of these Congo films, “Kommando 52”, with a film of their own, “Wink vom Nachbarn” (A Hint from the Neighbour), which was in 1966, before your time as festival directors. “Wink vom Nachbarn” is screening in Oberhausen this year, but of course it wasn't shown back then.

As far as I know, Wink vom Nachbarn wasn't even offered in Oberhausen. Nor was it a typical H & S film that attempted to make agitational statements about the major conflicts of the Cold War. It was a reportage about the increasingly popular Oberhausen festival for GDR television, which of course took a polemical stance, but also exposed itself. At some point I saw Wink vom Nachbarn. I don't think the film is that relevant. I don't know why Kommando 52 was rejected at the time. But the film didn't contain any exciting new information. Heynowski and Scheumann had acquired the shocking images of a legionnaire unit in the Congo from the German magazine ‘Stern’, in which Gerd Heidemann had published an award-winning report on the civil war in the Congo – Heynowski and Scheumann used this material for manipulative and propagandistic purposes, as was their custom.

“Wink vom Nachbarn” seems unintentionally funny today.

I agree with that. The film is a prime example for demonstrating the petty-bourgeois, ultimately often uneducated world of many cultural functionaries in the GDR. The way this dreadful presenter rants about the festival entries from Czechoslovakia, for example about the film The Hand by Jiri Trnka, the internationally renowned master of puppet animation, is downright embarrassing... Wink vom Nachbarn – what a bourgeois film!

Of all the so-called socialist countries, the GDR was the most bourgeois

Bourgeois also in the sense that it criticises a film shown in Oberhausen in which nudity can be seen – but still wants to show more of it in a long excerpt.

Yes, if I remember correctly, it's about the film Oh dem Watermelons by Robert Nelson from the avant-garde in San Francisco at the time, with music by Steve Reich and the ensemble of an important theatre group from the independent scene. This, of course, showed an art world that, with its surrealist allusions, was closed off and incomprehensible to most cultural people in the GDR. The film Wink vom Nachbarn is ultimately proof that the GDR was the most bourgeois of all the so-called socialist countries. When I spoke to the deputy minister of culture, the so-called film minister, I was sitting opposite a culturally ignorant person. By contrast, when I spoke to the deputy minister of culture in Poland, it was someone who translated Botho Strauss. The cultural-political functionaries of the GDR certainly often felt compelled to explain to me the importance of our festival and the tasks that this festival had: Progress and peace and so on. If something in the programme was disruptive, it sometimes triggered aggression. I remember one film, I don't know if you've come across it, do you know BRDDR?

Unfortunately, no.

This is a film that two young female students from the dffb, the West Berlin Film Academy, made in 1981. The western side of the Wall in Berlin was also eastern territory. Now the two, Lilly Grote and Irina Hoppe, filmed the Wall from a West Berlin window. A small door opened and construction workers came to the west side under military guard to remove graffiti, in other words, to make the inhumane border tidy and clean again. This was filmed and two commentaries with a child's voice were superimposed: one was the Brockhaus article about the Wall in Berlin and the other was the text from a GDR encyclopaedia about the anti-fascist protective wall. And in between, sometimes the West German anthem and sometimes the GDR anthem was played. No further commentary. I was of the opinion that we should show the film in the international competition. I also managed to convince the festival commission that such a documentary satire should be possible in 1981. There was a huge uproar in the GDR, more violent than we had expected. Even a film critic friend of mine, then editor-in-chief of the most important film magazine in the GDR, wrote of a tremendous provocation, controlled from Bonn and so on. He later said that he had to write that. In any case, a film by two female students that was only a few minutes long seemed to be a sinister threat in the eyes of the GDR's official cultural policy.

Did you experience such uproars in the co-operation with other socialist countries, too?

Only once. In my last or penultimate year as festival director, the British film Prisoners of Conscience was on the programme. An Amnesty International production that contained secretly recorded images from the Gulag Archipelago and was shown in the international competition. A few weeks before the festival, I got a call from the cultural attaché of the Soviet embassy, who wanted to meet me for an interview and come to Oberhausen. He came and told me: "Mr Ruf, I really appreciate your festival and your work. But you have a film in your programme with illegally shot footage from Soviet prison camps." And I replied: “How do you know that?” And he said, literally: “From our man in London.” We should take the film out of the programme, otherwise there would be consequences. I informed the city's head of cultural affairs and he spoke to the top SPD comrade, who came and told me: "Throw the film out of the programme! If they leave because you're turning our festival into a western wankery, you'll see what happens at the next budget consultations."

But that's also an example of cultural-political influence from the West German side.

Yes. Of course, I didn't take the film out of the programme. There was another meeting with the clever Soviet cultural attaché, this time in Bad Godesberg. His name was Igor Fyodorovich Maximychev, he later moved to the Soviet embassy in Berlin and played a constructive role in the fall of the Wall. I didn't tell him anything about the meeting with the SPD comrades in Oberhausen, but I explained to him: ‘We are an independent festival and can't afford to take a film out of the programme because of outside pressure.’ And he understood that and promised to come up with something. He then suggested this solution: Oberhausen should hold a reception on 9 May, the Soviet holiday marking the surrender of Nazi Germany. The entire Soviet delegation would attend, and the incriminated film would be shown in the programme at the same time. "Then our people don't have to go there. They will lodge a protest with you, but then come to the reception and drink a toast with you," said Maximychev. That's how it went – which may have annoyed the head comrade from Oberhausen at the time.

So it took a very subtle form of festival diplomacy.

Yes, but I hardly ever encountered this on the GDR side. I did with the other Eastern Bloc countries. The heads of the delegations came to me one after the other and, in the case described here, lodged a protest. The one from Hungary, for example, said “Hello Wolfgang, you know I'm supposed to lodge a protest with you.” Done. Many were also of the opinion that it was good to show the film. Prisoners of Conscience was an opportunity for the film delegates from the socialist countries to realise that the festival wasn't being controlled from anywhere. What I found strange at the time was that the professional festival participants from the West weren’t really aware of what was going on. After all, there was a serious festival crisis smouldering in the background.

You had to be tricky.

And resourceful, yes.

What did the “Way to the Neighbour” mean back then?

Looking back, what do you think of the festival motto “Way to the Neighbour”?

The festival motto “Weg zum Nachbarn” (Way to the Neighbour) was sometimes misinterpreted by narrow-minded Oberhausen residents as “Away to the Neighbour!”. “Way to the Neighbour” meant every neighbour – especially those in the East! The idea was to get to know each other and create a dialogue by sharing films. That is peacemaking, and it was also very much in the spirit of Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik. From my diverse observations in the East, I soon defined the motto as follows: Oberhausen is a festival of counter-information. We show films that are otherwise neglected or not shown at all in the media. And this applies not only to films from our own country, from Western countries or from Latin America, but also to those from the so-called socialist countries.

What criteria did you use to select films from the GDR?

For the festival, I was always looking for films that were independent in their information content, artistic expression or use of cinematic means – independent, personal. This year we are showing a film by Helke Misselwitz that was shown in Oberhausen forty years ago, Stilleben - Eine Reise zu den Dingen. I was very happy that we had it in the programme back then. It deals with themes such as transience and death, everything is in a state of flux. It was a film that was not the way the GDR wanted to see itself portrayed. Another example of a strong artistic expression by a GDR filmmaker is Verwandlungen by Jürgen Böttcher, a cinematic triptych in which Böttcher, who was actually a painter but then made documentaries, including a feature film that was banned, returns to his very own terrain of visual art. The film Verwandlungen, in which Böttcher paints over three famous pictures from art history in different ways and deforms them with visual reflections from the GDR present, was refused to us by the deputy minister of culture on the strange grounds that these are experimental films that don't fit in with Oberhausen. They had better be shown at the experimental film festival in Knokke, Belgium. But at the time that festival hadn't existed for five years. He didn't know that. When I pointed this out to him, he was offended. People in the other Eastern Bloc countries weren't that arrogant. If there was ever a bang, it was a real bang. There was never really a problem with Poland when it came to choosing films, only once with the film Stolarz (The Carpenter) by Wojcech Wiszniewski. They said quite brazenly that I had invited a film that didn't even exist. But many Polish film people signalled their understanding. When the film was shown in Oberhausen a few years later, in 1981, and won the Grand Prix, the Warsaw studio had left the production year 1977, when I saw the film and invited it, in the credits. These are things that I can't imagine happening in the GDR.

Stolarz is available online in full length here.

Of the films in this year's GDR focus, those by Helke Misselwitz and “Hinter den Fenstern” (Behind the Windows) by Petra Tschörtner impressed me the most. You can sense an artistic radicalism that was able to hold its own.

It is important to me at this point that the word “dissident”, which you often hear in this context, does not always fit. Not for Helke Misselwitz or Jürgen Böttcher, who were not dissidents in that sense. And it probably doesn't fit for Petra Tschörtner either. None of them were hostile to socialist ideology, but they demanded more freedom – in everyday life and in their artistic development.

Does the term obstinacy seem more apt to you?

Yes, it does. Or better still, stubbornness. These are filmmakers with their own tone, their own expression. Instead of paternalism, such artists need freedom above all. “The meaning of politics is freedom,” Hannah Arendt once said. During my time in Oberhausen, I quickly learnt the bitter lesson that this was not the case under actually existing socialism. And this insight also guided me in my selection of films.

The interview was conducted by Benjamin Moldenhauer as part of the 71st International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.